Web retailers Amazon, eBay down on Cyber Monday

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Shares of eBay Inc , Amazon.com Inc and other online retailers fell on "Cyber Monday," as analysts worried that deep discounts from traditional retailers may have stolen the thunder from their online-only rivals, known for lower pricing.

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Reuters - Shares of eBay Inc , Amazon.com Inc and other online retailers fell on "Cyber Monday," as analysts worried that deep discounts from traditional retailers may have stolen the thunder from their online-only rivals, known for lower pricing.

Cyber Monday sales surged, sending online shopping toward a single-day record as Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. siphoned consumers from brick-and-mortar stores.
Online sales rose 19% from 2012 as of 9 p.m. in New York Monday, International Business Machines Corp. said in an e-mailed statement. Retailers catering to smartphone and tablet users benefited the most, with mobile traffic accounting for 30% of the total site visits, an increase of more than 58% from last year, IBM said.

After losing sales impetus over the last few years to online rivals over Thanksgiving weekend, many brick-and-mortar retailers countered by going more aggressive on online pricing and promotions. The abrupt promotions for the web offerings intensified competition for Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which strived to maintain its footing.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), the e-commerce giant, has certainly played a key role in revolutionizing today’s retail world. The impact has been so powerful that a whole new term, ‘Amazon Effect’ has been coined to describe the influence of the online giant on retailers’ sales.

The dispute between The Walt Disney Company (DIS) and Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) has pricing issues at its center. However, tensions stretch further to include disagreements over Disney’s products’ promotion and placement on Amazon’s website, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Amazon.ca could crush other online retailers in this country even as internet shopping in Canada continues to lag other markets, according to a new industry report.
The report from BMO Capital Markets estimates the Seattle-based online shopping giant captures up to 7% of Canada’s $21.6-billion in e-commerce sales, a vastly bigger market share than other retailers who sell online, and more than four times larger than the next-in-line players, Costco.ca (1.6%) and Walmart.ca (1.5%).

Mobile is no longer the big, existential threat to bricks-and-mortar retailers it was once seen as. In fact, mobile is actually driving a greater share of online visitors to retailers like Walmart and Target, than it is to Amazon.

Leading bricks-and-mortar retail chains in the U.S. are seeing one-third or more of their online visitors accessing their e-commerce sites only on mobile devices, according to new comScore data. These are shoppers who never see the desktop version of the Walmart or Target site, and only access the mobile Web and app version.

In some locations, people pushed, shoved, and fought their way through the shopping aisles. In other locations, traffic was normal.All in all, I suspect people once again bought more junk they do not need and cannot afford.Here is a sampling of the news.Walmart Processes 10 Million Transactions in 4 Hours